Welcome to the recap of top news stories in SEO and search for the week ending on August 11, 2017. Let’s jump right in with what happened.
Google Bringing Snapchat Discover To Search
As covered by Matt Southern for Search Engine Journal, Google is apparently working on a publishing feature similar to Snapchat Discover. It will likely be called Stamp and be built on AMP technology. Perhaps because I’m 44 I don’t fully grasp “why” but I ask the same about Snapchat in general. It’ll be interesting to watch.
Google Tells You If You’re Annoying
After giving publishers a tool to determine if their ads are deemed annoying by Google a couple months ago Google has announced that they’ll begin notifying publishers who have them. Of course this means it’s likely to follow that those who don’t correct for this will lose visibility in Google.
Ad More URLs To Google My Business
Over on Search Engine Land Barry Schwartz covered the announcement by Google that they’re allowing business with a Google My Business listing to add additional URLs to their listing. The allowable links are controlled by Google and appear to be specific to the site category. A restaurant for example can add links to reservation URLs, menus, etc whereas Beanstalk can only add a link to our “schedule an appointment” page. Highly recommended to all readers to take advantage of this. It takes just a couple minutes and gives you free real estate on Google.
AdWords Ads To Undergo Changes
Google has announced some pretty significant changes to both the SERPs and AdWords coming soon to a mobile device near you. Sitelinks (as seena bove) are shifting to a clickable carousel and callouts and snippets changing location to inline with the ad copy giving them greater visibility.
Advertisers Blacklisted For Exploiting AdSense
I’ll be honest, I don’t fully get the how or why of this story so you’ll have to read and figure it out for yourself. Over on Search Engine Land, Barry Schwartz covered the confirmation by Google that they’ve blacklisted advertisers for exploiting their ad system. The exploit manipulated the auction platform used ‘irresponsible campaign parameters’ to lower query coverage for specific creative types in specific countries lowering the CPC. Again, I dont’ fully appreciate how this worked and if you do your insight is welcome in the comments below.
Columnist Anna Shirley’s latest article for Search Engine Land discusses her take on Apple Search Ads 6 months after beginning to use them. She outlines the pros-and-cons and gives some numbers to back them. Definitely some food for thought.
Snapchat Spectacles For Marketers
Snap introduced Snapchat Spectacles last year and now the numbers are in – they’re not doing well. While I get that wearing your camera could be handy and that unlike Google Glasses this version requires the user to physically click a button to take it I just don’t see millenials (the target demographic for Snapchat) flocking to it and it seems the numbers agree, falling in their second quarter on the market. Unlikely Google Glasses that at least appealed to geeks like myself (though I never owned any) these horrible sunglasses just don’t resonate on any level.
Nonetheless, they’re being sported by over 100k people making this article outlining 6 things marketers should know a worthwhile read and if it doesn’t improve in future versions for Snap it’s still good to know the ins-and-outs of different wearable tech because this type of device will be built and one will be the first to take off and keep up with the various attempts will help us get a jump on marketing to the one that actually succeeds.
Amazon Joins Google-Born Cloud Projects
Amazon has ponied up the $350k it costs to join the other 4 major cloud companies in the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF). This is good for Kubernetes, the cloud container project I explain a very little bit here. This aids Google in making Kubernetes the default container system for microservices and cloud computing. They are the borg.
Techcrunch covered the new Watch tab that’s being rolled out to small US markets presently with an eye to expansion. This puts original content in Facebook’s hands giving them more ad revenue access and (as the article aptly points out) giving users a reason to pay attention to their feed. One of the keys here when/if it picks up and they get a good number of shows is that their ability to understand what I’m likely to enjoy is higher than most services like Netflix. This will also give smaller producers access to larger audiences as Facebook will simply be ad revenue splitting.
SEO In A Machine Learning World
In my latest article over at Search Engine Journal I cover some of the core ways machine learning will impact SEO from content to tech to links with an explanation of how we need to approach these various areas and others to keep up.
WordPress Security
BestVPN.org put out a very good post on WordPress security and how to have it. It covers a wide range of issues and is well structured. Highly recommended reading if you have or manage WordPress sites.
Why Google Should Acquire Snapchat
Google reported offered $30 billion last year for Snapchat last year and Kevin Tran over at Business Insider tries to make sense of it. He succeeds but as Snapchat’s stock falls I suspect their board wishes they’d exited and Google’s probably glad they didn’t.
Boost SEO With Review Sites
Amelia Willson wrote a good piece for Search Engine Journal outlining 5 ways to boost your rankings using review sites. She brings numbers and ideas to the table and makes s good case for her points and also brings to the table some interesting stats about voice search and more.
Joel Klettke On Conversions And A Lot More
Joel Klettke joined Jim Hedger and I on our podcast to chat about conversions, copy and how to craft the users behavior. It was a great hour with some great insights based on part on his fantastic session at Mozcon. You can listen to it here:
In his latest Whiteboard Friday Rand Fishkin of Moz covers a subject we’ll be hearing more about in the future I suspect and that’s the idea of organic Quality Score. Quality Score is traditionally an AdWords measurement but Rand makes the case for it being a logical measurement in organic search as well. He’s undoubtedly correct in this, especially as machine learning rises making this a must-watch
Snapchat for 30 bilion $ ? Ohhh
I have a hunch they may be rethinking that purchase with recent Snap share prices. 🙂